The location info is a platform thing. From what I could find when I looked it up last it basically came down to Bluetooth potentially revealing your location and the fine location permission being a workaround for that, nowadays an Android/iOS app simply can't scan for Bluetooth devices without having location access. The location access isn't the app requesting your location info, it's the app needing that permission to be able to scan for other devices.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 Given the maps these companies have of global bluetooth and wifi device locations and signal strengths you probably get similarly precise location from just a simple blutooth/wifi scan as from GPS, at least in an urban environment and especially indoors.
You sir are correct. Android introduced this as a standard permission in Android 6.0. On iOS it is not standard for the two to be tied together but iOS prompts for permissions to access location when the feature could reveal location data. Nothing to worry :)
Indeed, I've always felt like the permissions should just be telling the user that allowing the app access to wifi/bluetooth gives the app the potential to know your location with pretty fine granularity as a message - in effect make the permissions 'inferred location' and ''accurate' location' options. As lumping them together is just a bad idea really. But still at least you have some control.
The narrow field of view would make it great for finding my cat at night, but it is more limiting for other situations. It really would be nice to have a more general-purpose thermal camera, with moving lens elements.
I have two thermal imagers. One is in my Cat S61. I bought it for work because finding a shorted part on a board would often result in a burnt finger. AKA: Digital thermometer. I found deficiencies in my homes insulation the first day. I also chucked my stud finder. It's great for motors and bearings. At install, run for an hour take a snap and compare that base reading to each subsequent one. I've used it for the 4th of July to make sure the fireworks were out. Air leaks are tricky but do able.
I think the bulkiness is a cheap method to ruggedize it since it is mainly for outdoors activity like hunting. If you do knock it into something, you either have a lot of soft plastic and rubber to deform before the expensive electronics and lens or you make it a metal brick with shock absorption that is more likely to break what it gets smacked into, but that costs a lot more.
Any app that gets the Bluetooth privilege can possibly determine your location through the use of Bluetooth beacons with fixed locations. That is why all bluetooth enabled apps also are required to request the location privilege ; so the user is aware.
Hi, a fantastic video mate what i liked the most on this video is that you put the price on the screen! i wish everyone dones that! thank you for that mate! take care and have a great day!
@2:01 "Type: Bird" on a person walking their dog. Seems like the AI vision recognition inside might be a tad overzealous in calling things birds. And @2:20 it appears to be thinking the tall hot rectangular structures it sees are humans. (instead of windows, and a hot wall seen between two tree trunks)
iOS makes you accept the location information permission when you share Wi-Fi credentials with another device even if you aren't actually collecting or transmitting location information. It makes sense security-wise as individual base stations can be located (so the Wi-Fi info is considered location information), but it's misleading to the user because it seems like you are doing something with GPS that you aren't.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 They were, pretty sure US used to have monopoly on the thermoimaging chip until China started making them too, then consumer price literally dropped 5~10x.
for circuit board use i got a xtherm II with a 12mm lens that is manually focusable, and its fantastic, I can spot 0402 components that are shorted just by focusing in nice and close once i find the overall hotspot. fairly cheap, I think under 500 cad when i got it a few years ago, and just plugs into my phone, and the app auto starts and is running within a couple seconds at most. Wouldnt go back to a dedicated imager unless I was in construction or hunting or something, where its gonna get beat up.
ruclips.net/video/28DmCMJ7MIE/видео.html is a video i shot with it for a warranty on a board, they didn't believe me that the chip failed, because it was being run out of spec by their design 🤷♀
Really interesting device indeed, Matthias! 😃 But it's not going to save you from the Wendigo in the woods. It's supposed to be cold. 😬 (Yeah, I don't believe those things either, but I still would rather stay away from the woods either way. 😂) Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
*twilight zone theme music* maybe the wendigo simply exists and radiates at a wavelength we dont perceive, its occasional perception in our vision being a result of heterodyning, or "beat frequencies"? the shiver down your spine... an entity on an entirely different wavelength and mode of interaction just bumped into you... BOO! IR or "thermal" vision is simply ONE NOTE out of many... intensity, location, and timing being the only way to differentiate, to perceive... rather than frequency... imagine if all the music, every sound you ever heard, was simply one note... would you have the same "perception of reality"? all you could "hear" being location, and volume... visible light doesnt even span a full "octave"... we really do have a limited view of this world around us. and our education system, in many ways, simply restricts our view even more... "it can only be this way and we are really really intelligent, like... now study hard and get a good career with good pay and dont think".
It is very annoying that you can't get thermal cameras with higher resolution and frame rate. From what I understand it has to to with laws preventing the export of thermal imaging cameras from being exported if they are over a certain frame rate/resolution. It has nothing to do with the technology, I'm positive we could easily make a high resolution 60fps thermal camera.
They could be used on a weapon, be it a drone, rocket, missile, etc, so they're ITAR restricted. You can get them, they're just highly regulated, very expensive, and not sold on Amazon for cheap.
Try panning up and down rather than horizontally the average dynamic range will give a better contrast for detection. It does take concentration to build up the spacial model. (Edit correcting autocorrect)
I keep looking at the TC001 Plus. Seems to be one of the best options on the market right now. I borrowed my friend's Seek unit and I had to use a short USB-C extension cable with it which I ended up sort of liking but if I owned my own, I would likely make a wood bracket or something to secure it to my phone with a stiff hinge or something.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 I assume you talk about law? Probably in USA but not in many other countries. And I have no clue how much that technology costs to manufacture (if you already have it developed). Could be cheap... (or not).
Doesn't really need a temperature scale in the display if it's aimed at hunting or bird watching since you're just interested in warm living organisms, not their temp
I think a lot of the testing and critique you are doing for this is based on it's technology rather than it's purpose and use. Basically it's made for hunters and people in the outdoors to find other animals and humans at night. That's why it was also showing what kind of object it thought it was. Caring about the actual temperature readings it worrying about it not being wide are well away from it's intended use. I have the chunky Topdon you were showing and that's definitely the one for contractors, homeowners, people messing with electronics, etc. Unless you are a hunter, farmer, or are outdoors a lot, this one will not make sense if you look at it purely based on specs rather than it's use case.
now, if we can just get car manufacturer's to incorporate these things into vehicles to serve as some sort of early warning system for animals on the side of the road. Perhaps we could decrease the number of vehicle animal collisions per year with such a thing.
whenever i see a so called "infra red image", i have to remind myself that what we see is basically "monochrome". or "black and white". a greyscale image, despite the fancy colours. intensity... not frequency. its akin to every piece of music we listen to being played in one note. i wish for the day we get a true "pitch shift" method of viewing in other spectrums... knock it down an octave... a fifth... visible light is only slightly less than a full "octave", roughly 400THz to 750THz.... whereas IR covers several "octaves".... as does UV, and all our other "bands of EM radiation" and thinking of that leads one into "heterodyning"... "beat frequencies".... some other comment mentions "the wendigo"... how do we know such things dont exist, but simply radiate on entirely different wavelengths, that sometimes produce "beat frequencies" that some people can observe? theres plenty of demonstrations of say, two differently tuned transmitters at around 1MHz (or anything else?) producing audible "undertones"... that shiver down your spine... it may be an entity of a completely different wavelength that accidentally (or intentionally!) stumbled into you...
adafruit just stocked/released a thermal camera i initially thought the resolution sounded way too low but I think its comparable to these. I wonder how difficult it would be to set one up as an inspection camera
@ Germanium (more expensive) and doped Silicon (cheaper) are the best to use, all other lens material are fuzzy/opaque at best. That’s why your image has blank eye glasses - IR & near IR will not pass.
Likely, but not when its sunny. An overcast early morning would give you the most consistent temperatures, which would make the warmth from the hive easier to spot.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 I guess the one for the smartphone could do the same, or is the wider view a problem? Because I just saw they dont deliver this produkt to germany
Location information is part of bluetooth low energy protocol I think. Annoying, especially because you can use a spoofer GPS app for that data with no drawbacks.
They offered to send me that but I decided against it since I think the only thing I need last in my collection would be binocular night vision goggles.
Consumer night vision goggles are near infrared cameras combined with a near infrared flashlight. Only advantage over a bright flashlight is that others can't see you -- unless they also have night vision googles, in which case your presence is obvious from very far away.
"Topdon"... One better than "Topcon"? LOL. I've got the Hikmicro, and the biggest issue I've got with it is loosing my night vision the second I look at it's bright screen.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 only when they want to be seen! if they can easily cross the intergalactic divide, they can just as easily turn the lights off...
ad revenue demonitisation report strikes... "oh no, he said a naughty word, lets cancel him..." iunno how old you are, but we were always taught "sticks and stones will break or bones but names will never hurt me"... simultaneously we were told to not say "this word" or "that word" because... "they might hurt people"! the hypocrisy and contradictions of this society are ingrained from an early age ;) children delight in saying those "naughty words" simply because we forbid them from saying them... theres no fun if it doesnt involve risk, or some degree of breaking rules...
The location info is a platform thing. From what I could find when I looked it up last it basically came down to Bluetooth potentially revealing your location and the fine location permission being a workaround for that, nowadays an Android/iOS app simply can't scan for Bluetooth devices without having location access.
The location access isn't the app requesting your location info, it's the app needing that permission to be able to scan for other devices.
Ah, that explains. Kind of silly though, I didn't want it to give precise GPS permission.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 Given the maps these companies have of global bluetooth and wifi device locations and signal strengths you probably get similarly precise location from just a simple blutooth/wifi scan as from GPS, at least in an urban environment and especially indoors.
You sir are correct. Android introduced this as a standard permission in Android 6.0.
On iOS it is not standard for the two to be tied together but iOS prompts for permissions to access location when the feature could reveal location data.
Nothing to worry :)
Indeed, I've always felt like the permissions should just be telling the user that allowing the app access to wifi/bluetooth gives the app the potential to know your location with pretty fine granularity as a message - in effect make the permissions 'inferred location' and ''accurate' location' options. As lumping them together is just a bad idea really. But still at least you have some control.
Exactly, it's part of the permissions related to BTLE beacons.
Thanks for adding the prices to the links in the description.
Mathias random. The best tech reviewer on the web.
The narrow field of view would make it great for finding my cat at night, but it is more limiting for other situations. It really would be nice to have a more general-purpose thermal camera, with moving lens elements.
1:10 definitely thought you said "stopping cannibals" not "stalking animals" hahaha
3:42 of course you rigged up a makeshift telescope for the second eye. 😂😂😂
I have two thermal imagers.
One is in my Cat S61.
I bought it for work because finding a shorted part on a board would often result in a burnt finger.
AKA: Digital thermometer.
I found deficiencies in my homes insulation the first day.
I also chucked my stud finder.
It's great for motors and bearings.
At install, run for an hour take a snap and compare that base reading to each subsequent one.
I've used it for the 4th of July to make sure the fireworks were out.
Air leaks are tricky but do able.
I think the bulkiness is a cheap method to ruggedize it since it is mainly for outdoors activity like hunting. If you do knock it into something, you either have a lot of soft plastic and rubber to deform before the expensive electronics and lens or you make it a metal brick with shock absorption that is more likely to break what it gets smacked into, but that costs a lot more.
Any app that gets the Bluetooth privilege can possibly determine your location through the use of Bluetooth beacons with fixed locations. That is why all bluetooth enabled apps also are required to request the location privilege ; so the user is aware.
Hi, a fantastic video mate what i liked the most on this video is that you put the price on the screen! i wish everyone dones that! thank you for that mate! take care and have a great day!
With zoom added in, finally a chance at finding all those elusive "hot girls in your area".
The "Bird/Wild Boar/Bird" at 1:13 suspiciously looks like a human sitting on a bench...
It is indeed. It's kind of comical how it miss-identifies stuff all the time. Though human standing or walking it usually gets right.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 Can you turn the object recognition off?
@2:01 "Type: Bird" on a person walking their dog.
Seems like the AI vision recognition inside might be a tad overzealous in calling things birds.
And @2:20 it appears to be thinking the tall hot rectangular structures it sees are humans. (instead of windows, and a hot wall seen between two tree trunks)
iOS makes you accept the location information permission when you share Wi-Fi credentials with another device even if you aren't actually collecting or transmitting location information. It makes sense security-wise as individual base stations can be located (so the Wi-Fi info is considered location information), but it's misleading to the user because it seems like you are doing something with GPS that you aren't.
It's not a proper review unless it's taken apart😅😅
BOLTR
@@tlange5091AvE would take it apart first and then it wouldn't work for testing.
Good review. It’s virtually identical to the Flir scout. And mine was a little over 2 grand so I feel totally ripped off. Haha. Great Review. Thanks!!
I think this type of product used to be a lot more expensive.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 They were, pretty sure US used to have monopoly on the thermoimaging chip until China started making them too, then consumer price literally dropped 5~10x.
Cool thanks for sharing 🙌👍
for circuit board use i got a xtherm II with a 12mm lens that is manually focusable, and its fantastic, I can spot 0402 components that are shorted just by focusing in nice and close once i find the overall hotspot. fairly cheap, I think under 500 cad when i got it a few years ago, and just plugs into my phone, and the app auto starts and is running within a couple seconds at most. Wouldnt go back to a dedicated imager unless I was in construction or hunting or something, where its gonna get beat up.
ruclips.net/video/28DmCMJ7MIE/видео.html is a video i shot with it for a warranty on a board, they didn't believe me that the chip failed, because it was being run out of spec by their design 🤷♀
Seems very useful for birding and hunting. The price is not quite as low as it probably needs to be.
Not cheap. but gun folks seem to spend loads of money on gear!
wow I would definitely buy one of these, fair price!
Really interesting device indeed, Matthias! 😃
But it's not going to save you from the Wendigo in the woods. It's supposed to be cold. 😬
(Yeah, I don't believe those things either, but I still would rather stay away from the woods either way. 😂)
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
*twilight zone theme music*
maybe the wendigo simply exists and radiates at a wavelength we dont perceive, its occasional perception in our vision being a result of heterodyning, or "beat frequencies"?
the shiver down your spine... an entity on an entirely different wavelength and mode of interaction just bumped into you... BOO!
IR or "thermal" vision is simply ONE NOTE out of many... intensity, location, and timing being the only way to differentiate, to perceive... rather than frequency... imagine if all the music, every sound you ever heard, was simply one note... would you have the same "perception of reality"? all you could "hear" being location, and volume...
visible light doesnt even span a full "octave"...
we really do have a limited view of this world around us. and our education system, in many ways, simply restricts our view even more... "it can only be this way and we are really really intelligent, like... now study hard and get a good career with good pay and dont think".
It is very annoying that you can't get thermal cameras with higher resolution and frame rate. From what I understand it has to to with laws preventing the export of thermal imaging cameras from being exported if they are over a certain frame rate/resolution. It has nothing to do with the technology, I'm positive we could easily make a high resolution 60fps thermal camera.
Anything thermal-imaging or night-vision related is deliberately kept crappy in the commercial market due to possible military applications.
They could be used on a weapon, be it a drone, rocket, missile, etc, so they're ITAR restricted. You can get them, they're just highly regulated, very expensive, and not sold on Amazon for cheap.
The monocular has a pretty decent frame rate, 50 fps says the specs.
i have a non topdon plug in one for my phone, but i use the topdon APP because its a little better than the one that came with it
Try panning up and down rather than horizontally the average dynamic range will give a better contrast for detection. It does take concentration to build up the spacial model. (Edit correcting autocorrect)
I'm taking the family out hobo-spotting at the weekend. This will be perfect. Thanks.
I keep looking at the TC001 Plus. Seems to be one of the best options on the market right now.
I borrowed my friend's Seek unit and I had to use a short USB-C extension cable with it which I ended up sort of liking but if I owned my own, I would likely make a wood bracket or something to secure it to my phone with a stiff hinge or something.
I wish there would be a consumer product with image intensifier technology (instead of thermal infrared). No delays!
that would be military grade stuff
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 I assume you talk about law? Probably in USA but not in many other countries. And I have no clue how much that technology costs to manufacture (if you already have it developed). Could be cheap... (or not).
Doesn't really need a temperature scale in the display if it's aimed at hunting or bird watching since you're just interested in warm living organisms, not their temp
look out your window to see Matthias peering down the scope of a monocular pointed at you
I think a lot of the testing and critique you are doing for this is based on it's technology rather than it's purpose and use.
Basically it's made for hunters and people in the outdoors to find other animals and humans at night. That's why it was also showing what kind of object it thought it was.
Caring about the actual temperature readings it worrying about it not being wide are well away from it's intended use.
I have the chunky Topdon you were showing and that's definitely the one for contractors, homeowners, people messing with electronics, etc.
Unless you are a hunter, farmer, or are outdoors a lot, this one will not make sense if you look at it purely based on specs rather than it's use case.
now, if we can just get car manufacturer's to incorporate these things into vehicles to serve as some sort of early warning system for animals on the side of the road. Perhaps we could decrease the number of vehicle animal collisions per year with such a thing.
you'd get lots of false alarms during and after a sunny day. Rocks retain their heat for a while.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 if only they could detect what we determine to be "life" versus "inanimate object"...
Please please build something cool with this!
Matthias I find quite a lot of cheap-ish low resolution IR camera modules on aliexpress, have you ever tried one of these?
My Topdon TC004 (which I bought after watching your videos) starts up in about 7-8 seconds. Maybe yours have older firmware?
The monocular takes 10 seconds. My TC004 is older, lower resolution and takes 30 seconds.
I have the TC004 as well that I've had for at least a couple of years now and has a long boot time. As far as I can tell it's booting up Linux.
Great stuff 😊
Can you leave a link for that thermal infrared lens for close work using the TC004? I'd like to use if for large circuit boards.
Look for Zinc Selenide lens on amazon or aliexpress, pick something with about 100 mm focal length. Mine is much shorter, which is not ideal.
whenever i see a so called "infra red image", i have to remind myself that what we see is basically "monochrome". or "black and white". a greyscale image, despite the fancy colours. intensity... not frequency.
its akin to every piece of music we listen to being played in one note.
i wish for the day we get a true "pitch shift" method of viewing in other spectrums... knock it down an octave... a fifth...
visible light is only slightly less than a full "octave", roughly 400THz to 750THz....
whereas IR covers several "octaves".... as does UV, and all our other "bands of EM radiation"
and thinking of that leads one into "heterodyning"... "beat frequencies"....
some other comment mentions "the wendigo"... how do we know such things dont exist, but simply radiate on entirely different wavelengths, that sometimes produce "beat frequencies" that some people can observe? theres plenty of demonstrations of say, two differently tuned transmitters at around 1MHz (or anything else?) producing audible "undertones"...
that shiver down your spine... it may be an entity of a completely different wavelength that accidentally (or intentionally!) stumbled into you...
adafruit just stocked/released a thermal camera i initially thought the resolution sounded way too low but I think its comparable to these. I wonder how difficult it would be to set one up as an inspection camera
The thermal lens is germanium with an iridium coating.
InVeo Designs
I wonder what the advantages of that are over the other type of lens
Germanium does not transmit visible light. The sensor may have some residual sensitivity to visible. Also, it is cheaper than ZnSe.
@ Germanium (more expensive) and doped Silicon (cheaper) are the best to use, all other lens material are fuzzy/opaque at best. That’s why your image has blank eye glasses - IR & near IR will not pass.
Do you think you could spot honeybees in trees with this device?
Likely, but not when its sunny. An overcast early morning would give you the most consistent temperatures, which would make the warmth from the hive easier to spot.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 I guess the one for the smartphone could do the same, or is the wider view a problem?
Because I just saw they dont deliver this produkt to germany
IR optics for optical zoom are expensive, I'd be rather shocked if it had optical zoom... digital zoom is free :D
I figured. a lot of cheap materials work for visible optics, with far infrared, the choice appears to be very limited.
Location information is part of bluetooth low energy protocol I think. Annoying, especially because you can use a spoofer GPS app for that data with no drawbacks.
Do you have any video showing the usb c version?
yes, titled more uses for infrared cameras, buildings…
I wonder if the lens is ZnSe?
I suspect some other material. Could be ZnSe with a coating to reflect visible light, but why coat the back too then?
It's probably germanium, it's a very common ir lens material. Could also be silicon, but it's a bit more unlikely.
Wow that company fell short on many points in the product.
Topdon CEO while watching this video: PEOPLE! Are you taking notes?
Topdon CEO can't be reached right now on account of the valium he took after he found out the marketing director sent a product to Matthias to review.
They need location info for CCP purposes.
Lens is Germanium. Or some chinesium approximations
I imagine features are based on price.
can you see planes with them?
Haven't tried (not so many planes overhead here), but the contrails should be much warmer than the blue sky.
Are the usual strobelights and beacons not enough?
Predator vision
Hey, it needs location access to get permission to use Bluetooth.
Perfect for us stalkers.
They offered to send me that but I decided against it since I think the only thing I need last in my collection would be binocular night vision goggles.
Consumer night vision goggles are near infrared cameras combined with a near infrared flashlight. Only advantage over a bright flashlight is that others can't see you -- unless they also have night vision googles, in which case your presence is obvious from very far away.
Location information is rarely for your benefit. Even when it is for your benefit it's not your benefit alone. ;)
On Android an app has to ask for location to use Bluetooth.
I’d like to see you review/impressions of the tesla cybertruck now that it’s in Canada. Even if all you can get is the 30 minute test drive.
Haven't got one. Would be cool to try, but the video would NOT pay for a truck and they haven't offered to send me one.
Not so useful for "stalking" animals but very useful for finding them after dark when they've been "harvested"
"Topdon"... One better than "Topcon"? LOL.
I've got the Hikmicro, and the biggest issue I've got with it is loosing my night vision the second I look at it's bright screen.
Thanks. I was board to death. It’s raining outside.
Well, I hope my video was less boring than looking out at the rain!
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 they said board, so the correct term would have been "boarding".
and now for a protracted diatribe on cnc and 3d printer users
i think you are missing the point of this thing. its not a thermal camera. its infrared monocular.
location is for them to sell to 3rd parties
:D
These are nice equipment. Unfortunately, I have no real use for one besides as a toy. I cannot justify the price for what for me is a toy.
True for a lot of gadgets.
Anything that is cheap and claims IR or night vision are guaranteed to be garbage
Is there one that can see 360º to detect UFOs in the night sky?
I don't have an extra arm or leg to buy one.
aren't ufo's always lit up brightly?
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 only when they want to be seen!
if they can easily cross the intergalactic divide, they can just as easily turn the lights off...
Why are you so averse to using the word "crap"?
ad revenue demonitisation report strikes...
"oh no, he said a naughty word, lets cancel him..."
iunno how old you are, but we were always taught "sticks and stones will break or bones but names will never hurt me"...
simultaneously we were told to not say "this word" or "that word" because... "they might hurt people"!
the hypocrisy and contradictions of this society are ingrained from an early age ;)
children delight in saying those "naughty words" simply because we forbid them from saying them...
theres no fun if it doesnt involve risk, or some degree of breaking rules...